Internet marketing, or digital marketing, is a phenomenon that gives small businesses an incredible opportunity to expand their market. Think about the reach you can now have through the digital world – you can have customers all over the globe if you want. You’re no longer confined to a specific area or number of people, which makes marketing in the digital world an opportunity you definitely don’t want to miss out on. The only problem is, a lot of small businesses are missing out on it. Many are still intimidated by the thought of even trying to take advantage of the opportunity, and as a result, they’re missing out on an enormous amount of potential customers. When discussing internet marketing for small businesses, we often hear questions and statements like: If you’re a small business owner and you have this perspective, you need to change it. The truth is, “More than half (51%) of smartphone users have discovered a new company or product when conducting a search on their smartphones” (Think With Google, 2018). And that’s just smartphone users! Digital marketing gives you a chance to market in a way that’s both cost-effective, and measurable. It’s also cheaper than your traditional advertising methods, and helps your business keep up with today’s competitive landscape. If you’re still not convinced, we’ve listed a few more benefits you can gain from using internet marketing for your small business. Internet marketing offers small businesses many benefits, but if you feel like you might need some assistance getting started, you can always contact your friends at Just Digital Inc. We’d be happy to help you! So, are you finally convinced that it’s time to try internet marketing? If that’s a yes, then let’s get you prepared for battle! …Just kidding! Let’s get you prepared to take the next right step for your business! Here are 10 proven internet marketing tactics (that actually work) for small businesses with small budgets: Producing the right kind of content is an integral part of internet marketing for small businesses. The right content can turn viral, get you more followers, and increase brand awareness, thus boosting your internet marketing strategy. The goal here is to create valuable, relevant, and high-quality content that’s seen and shared by the right people. Your content needs to help your business reach its marketing goals and grow its reach, while providing your audience with the valuable information they’re seeking. The obvious question is, how do you do it? How can you find the right content to post, that’s educational and shareable? Here are some tips: If you need inspiration, you can always look to your competitors. See what kind of content gets them the most shares and likes, then do something similar. As we’ve mentioned, only post content that’s relevant to what your business offers. Remember, you’re creating content for your customers, not your business. Try not to talk too much about yourself – constantly ask yourself, “What does my target audience care about? What are they interested in?” Get into the mindset of always making your customers the priority. Make content they need and want. The more value your content offers them, the more likely they are to like and share it. Once you’ve created your content, you’re going to need somewhere to publish it. That’s where blogging comes in handy. “Small businesses with blogs generate 126% more leads.” – TechClient Research says that blogs are the 5th most trusted online resource. Having a blog where you can post your content will increase your online credibility and create more leads for your business. Some of the top benefits of blogging are: Having your own blog isn’t always enough. Once you’ve mastered the art of blogging, it’s time you get featured on other influential blogs that are within your industry. So, what exactly is guest blogging or guest posting? To put it simply, it’s the act of writing content for another company’s website. The benefits of guest blogging are: Guest blogging benefits the website hosting your guest content as much as it benefits you. It’s a win-win for everyone! The first thing to do is ask yourself what you hope to gain from guest blogging. Once you’ve established this, start looking for industry blogs, by non-competitor companies, so you can deliver real insight to their readers. Make sure you choose a blog that’s from a respected background, and make sure you consider their message – your message/personas/interests should be aligned. Here are a few more things to consider when potentially guest blogging. Does the blog have: “As of January 2020, there were 3.75 billion active mobile social media users worldwide.” Source: Statista With that many users, clearly you should never ignore social media as an effective internet marketing tactic for small businesses. If you want to broaden your reach, it’s kind of a no-brainer to invest in social media marketing. In order to optimize your efforts, ensure you use popular social media channels that your market actually spends time on. If you’re unsure which social media platform to use, start by doing a little research. Find out your market’s likes, dislikes, interests, wants, needs, etc., then look into which platforms generally match with those. If you want to learn more about this, make sure you check out our Social Media How-To blog post! One way to optimize your social media efforts is by focusing on organic growth. Content that isn’t made for promotions will create long term stability and increased trust with your social media followers. It also has the following benefits: Organic social media growth is a slow process that requires a lot of time, effort, and consistency, but the rewards can be just as good as what you gain from paid promotions. The best thing to do is try both. Try an 80-20% or 70-30% approach. Focus most of your efforts on organic growth, then leave the other 20-30% to your paid promotions. Having the best product or service is useless if no one knows your brand. This goes for most small businesses. No matter how good your product or service is, people won’t care if it doesn’t grab their attention or if it isn’t marketed properly. You need to grab your market’s attention and win their trust – you need social proof! These days, people aren’t easily swayed by marketing tactics. Most have seen it all before. People now seek validation before committing to any brand. They want to be sure that what they’re buying actually works. This is where the importance of reviews comes in. People want to know the experience other people have had with your product and/or service. The more customers rave about your business, the easier it will be for others to make their purchasing decision. “76% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.” Source: Bright Local Even major retailers are gunning for product reviews, because social proof matters. Leveraging the power of social proof is just one weapon you can use to influence your buyers into purchasing your product or acquiring your service. The power of social proof is backed up by the results of Dr. Soloman Asch’s (psychologist) famous Conformity Experiment. Asch found that people were more likely to choose an item when everyone else was choosing that same item. Interestingly, he found that the choices people make are influenced by others in two ways: If the psychology behind social proof isn’t enough to convince you that it matters, here are a few more reasons you need it: If you’re finally convinced by the power of social proof, we’ve listed a few online ways you can increase it for your business. Clearly, focusing on consistently generating and improving your social proof will make a difference for your business! We just mentioned the importance of asking for reviews, now let’s talk about the importance of responding to these reviews. Even Google acknowledges and approves of it. If you go to Google My Business’ support page, you’ll see them state that businesses should “interact with customers by responding to reviews that they leave about your business. Responding to reviews shows that you value your customers and the feedback that they leave about your business.” Followed by, “high-quality, positive reviews from your customers will improve your business’s visibility and increase the likelihood that a potential customer will visit your location.” Responding to reviews will build trust with your customers, and search engines as well. Google is very particular with the businesses they bring to the top of the search results. They only want to recommend the most credible businesses. This is why Google encourages businesses to respond to their reviews and improve their SEO. Whether the review is positive or negative, you should always make an effort to respond. It may seem like a better choice to ignore the bad reviews, but statistically speaking, that isn’t true. A recent study shows that 33% of the customers who received a response from a company after posting a negative comment, turned around and posted a positive review, while 34% of them deleted their original negative review. Now that you know the importance of responding to reviews, it’s time to learn how to respond to them. Save the image below to reference as your guide when responding to reviews. Influencer marketing is another great way to increase social proof and brand recognition. If your budget can’t afford an influencer to advertise your product, you can always give them free samples. The challenge is, just like any marketing strategy, influencer marketing takes a bit of planning and targeting. Sending free samples won’t quite be enough. You’re going to have to do your research first. Email marketing is still alive and well! You may think that it’s a dying marketing medium because of all the new social media platforms, but the fact is, email is here to stay (at least for a while). Email marketing actually still delivers a strong return on investment. Some small businesses would even say a responsive email list is more valuable than an active social media following as an internet marketing tactic. Email list building has continuously shown positive results for small businesses. Emails act as a trusted channel to drive repeat sales and build a solid relationship with your market. Email marketing allows you to stay connected and engaged with your customers, and make them feel valued at the same time. In addition to what we mentioned above, here are 5 reasons why you should include email marketing in your internet marketing strategy: Video marketing is a major trend that just keeps growing, and it won’t be slowing down anytime soon. Videos are ruling the internet marketing game, and YouTube sits on the throne. If you haven’t already, now is the time to start your video marketing journey. Host your videos on YouTube and expose your content to a new audience. You can also check out YouTube advertising, which is cheaper than Facebook or Google. An incredible amount of videos are uploaded to YouTube every single day. There’s so much content, you may feel intimidated and reluctant to hop on the bandwagon. We understand that, which is why we’ve listed 4 trendy video ideas to help you decide what kind of video to upload first: Marketing automation will make your life much easier! It’ll save you time and allow you to focus on more pressing matters. If you have any repetitive and mundane marketing tasks, be sure to automate them! Marketing automation is all about using a software to do marketing activities for you. Repetitive tasks such as email marketing, social media posting, and even ad campaigns, can be automated. Automation is efficient and great for providing a more personalized experience to your customers. So there you have it! You have a handful of proven internet marketing tactics for small businesses like yours. Now it’s time for you to implement them into your marketing strategy. Do you have any marketing questions? We’d love to answer them! We’re passionate about helping small business grow through digital marketing. Leave us a message here and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can!10 Proven Internet Marketing Tactics for Small Businesses with Small Budgets
Internet Marketing for Small Businesses
1. Produce Shareable Content
2. Start a Blog
3. Get Featured on Industry Blogs
How To Get Started:
4. Social Media as an Internet Marketing Strategy for Small Businesses
5. Get Social Proof
6. Respond to Your Reviews
7. Influencer Marketing
Research what influencer, and influencer platform, best suits your brand
Send them a message
Send them your product and follow up!
8. Build an Email List
9. YouTube Video Marketing
10. Automate Everything
It’s Time To Start Planning Your Internet Marketing Strategy
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